LITMIR.BIZ

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and legging it back upstairs. They might think they can tackle giants, but I’m equally convinced the wolf-dog wants to eat them all for breakfast and save me for lunch.

      Once I’ve shut the bedroom door so they can’t get out, we huddle under the duvet again. I play some music on my phone to block out the noise. The chihuahuas are partial to Katie Melua; her music always soothes them. I play it on a loop wondering how I’ve managed to go stark staring mad in just one night alone in a new house.

      Now I can’t get back to sleep. Not a flipping chance. Not with great big wolf dogs waiting to gobble us all up.

      I google whether wolves still exist in France. What I find doesn’t reassure me. I read stories about wolves coming over the Spanish border into France, packs roaming as far north as the suburbs of Paris and then about a breeding program in the South West. Maybe they’ve started one near here, determined to set wolves on the English incomers for driving the local house prices up.

      I take a deep breath. I should start a to-do list. That would be a positive thing that might drive the crazies away.

      Five minutes later, and my list looks like this:

      My to-do list:

      1) What the fuck do I do now?

      2) But seriously, what the fuck do I do now?

      To be fair, I’ve been dumped, moved house, only had one hour’s sleep and am under siege by wolves. Okay, that last point has yet to be proven, but all in all I don’t think I’m ready for a productive to-do list.

      Thinking is doing my head in. I slip into jeans and a hoodie. The dogs stay under the duvet. I’m tempted to climb back in and snuggle down, but I suspect I’d just slip back into self-pity. Gran wouldn’t approve. She came from the “get up and get on” stock. It’s not that she wasn’t sympathetic. I don’t think I ever met anyone as perceptive as her. She just saw self-pity as a waste of life.

      Taking a deep breath, I make my way down to the kitchen and glance at the old stove. I’ll get round to lighting it sometime. Maybe I can ask the Duboises tonight how to go about it. For now, I dig my travel kettle out of a carrier bag and make myself a cup of Earl Grey tea.

      I take it outside after checking warily for any sign of giant canines. All I can hear is birds singing up in the trees as the early light streaks the sky with tinges of pink and amber.

      I’m on my second cup of tea by the time the dogs decide to vacate the duvet to join me outside. The sun bathes the rolling hills and woodland in a soft golden light, blue sky coming into sharp focus above the snow-capped Pyrenean mountain tops. I feel the urge to paint the scene. I haven’t painted landscapes for years.

      I played it safe. Illustration work paid. It was the safe career choice after art college, and I love it, but it’s been a while since I felt the pull to do something completely different. When it comes to doing my own thing, I’ve satisfied myself with my journal sketches and blog. Maybe once I’ve finished my latest commission I can reward myself with some blank canvases and try to capture what it is about this landscape that stirs my soul.

      Peanut starts a three-dog chase around the garden, and the others join in joyfully, darting in and out of bushes, changing direction to fool each other and making me laugh.

      Watching them stirs another desire in me, the faintest flicker of my own children’s story idea. I’ve always wanted to write and illustrate my own children’s book, not just someone else’s idea. Pete and my parents said I should play it safe and not look a gift fairy in the face, but as much as I love my feisty little fairy, Fenella is someone else’s creation. The possibility of a new idea dances in my mind, stirring, stirring. The sunshine finally reaches my face, a perfect gentle heat for my fair skin. The warmth soothes out the kinks in my bad mood. The dogs sniff around contentedly, conducting a thorough survey of every single blade of grass and every bush of their new garden. Post chase, they’re still in high excitement mode.

      I take a deep breath of the fresh country air as the sunshine slowly seeps through my skin into my bones, seeming to warm their very marrow. The birds are singing. The scene is idyllic, sitting in stark contrast to my broken heart and general sense of impending doom.

      But that’s hardly the case anymore. I honestly don’t know that I am brokenhearted. I’m hurt, betrayed and scared, but I’m not feeling like I’ve lost the only man I could ever love.

      I take another sip of tea and take in every detail of my new world. Spring flowers are blooming in the hedgerows and fields like tiny splashes of colour and joy.

      I can’t block the sense that, if everything around me is carrying on okay, then maybe I can too. I don’t think focusing on my problems and how to fix them is the way forward today. Putting them down in black-and-white might send me into a nervous breakdown tailspin. Instead I need to do a different type of list.

      Yes, you’ve guessed it, I’m one of those annoying people who is into lists for everything. I don’t know if it’s an anxiety thing or an OCD thing. Maybe it’s just a thing, a part of my personality. My way of imagining I can actually control my life and the world around me.

      Gran was always telling me to count my blessings way before positive thinking and the gratitude trend became fashionable. Along with my panic lists and to do-lists, I like to write and illustrate my grateful lists in my journal – all the things I love, the nice things that have happened that day, what I appreciate about the people around me.

      Pete called them my Pollyanna lists. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t meant to be a compliment.

      I shove down the memory of Pete and open my journal.

      Pushing all my worries to the back of my mind, I sketch Pickwick sniffing suspiciously at a butterfly. Then I capture Peanut and Treacle, tiny ears pricked forwards as they lie side-by-side, Sphinx-like, in the sun. I swear, if dogs could smile they’re both grinning like mad. The Chihuahuas always love the sun. Getting them outside in the rain back home was always a problem. Here they’re in their element. I sketch the tiny spring flowers onto the corners of the page, and then I lose myself in sketching the fields surrounding us and the Château in the background, successfully forgetting for a good twenty minutes that my life is totally screwed up.

      Peanut’s sharp bark of warning breaks me out of my happy bubble. I look up from my journal to catch a glimpse of the huge wolf dog hurtling along the field from the converted barn the next field over.

      I leap up to grab my dogs, cursing the lack of a third hand. Too late; they’ve scooted off quicker than you can say “dinner time” and are trying to scrabble through the hedge. I sprint after them and manage to grab Pickwick and Treacle, but Peanut is through the hedge before I can stop her.

      “Stay,” I issue as a stern warning to the two captives, and then I get down on my stomach. I reach through the hole, ignoring the thorns that snag my hands and arms as I desperately try to coax Peanut back.

      My heart thuds in my chest as the huge dog bounds up to us, but to my relief he lowers into a play bow and rolls over onto his back while Peanut leaps playfully from one side of his head to another.

      “Bonjour.”

      A voice above my head makes me jump, incurring yet more scratches on the back of my neck. When I wiggle back and get to my feet, my clothes are covered in dirty marks, and I can’t be sure I haven’t got leaves where leaves shouldn’t be.

      It’s him, of course it is – Gilles’s grumpy twin. Though he’s not looking quite so grumpy now. His lips twitch like he really wants to laugh.

      So now he chooses to talk to me? When I’m bleeding and muddy? I bet if I’d just had a shower and put on a sun dress, I’d bump into no one except a donkey. Looking like crap seems to guarantee you’ll meet someone you fancy.

      Or a wolf-dog.

      Or both.

      I can’t deceive myself. I’m attracted to him, though I really don’t want to be. He stares at me, eyes dark and inscrutable, eyebrow quirked and lips twitching like

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